Timeline

Here’s a full timeline of how we created the Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure forms, part of our Know Before You Owe: Mortgages project. It’s a look back at our effort to make mortgage disclosures simpler and more effective, with the input of the people who will actually use them.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is signed into law.

The new law required the CFPB to combine the Truth in Lending and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act disclosures.

December 6, 2010

The Treasury Department hosts a mortgage disclosure symposium.

The event brought together consumer advocates, industry, marketers, and more to discuss CFPB implementation of the combined disclosures.

February 21, 2011

Design begins.

Starting with the legal requirements and the consumer in mind, we began sketching prototype forms for testing.

During this process, the team discussed preliminary issues and ideas about mortgage disclosures. This session set the context for the disclosures and was a starting point for their development. The team continued to develop these issues and ideas over more than a year during the development process.

May 18, 2011

Know Before You Owe opens online.

We posted the first two prototype loan estimates. We asked consumers and industry to examine them and tell us what worked and what didn’t. We repeated this process for several future rounds. Over the course of the next ten months, people submitted more than 27,000 comments.

May 19, 2011 – May 24, 2011

Qualitative testing begins in Baltimore.

We sat down with consumers, lenders, and brokers to examine the first set of loan estimate prototypes to test two different graphic design approaches.

Austin, TX

Disclosures tested:

We convene a small business review panel.

A panel of representatives from the CFPB, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) considered the potential impact of the proposals under consideration on small businesses that will provide the mortgage disclosures.

Validating our testing

With the help of Kleimann Communication Group, the contractor who helped us throughout the testing process, we conducted a quantitative study of the new forms with 858 consumers in 20 locations across the country. By nearly every measure, the study showed that the new forms offer a statistically significant improvement over the existing forms.

June 18, 2013 – July 26, 2013

Additional testing with modified disclosures

In response to comments, we developed and tested different versions of the disclosures for refinance loans, which we tested for three rounds. (In our last round, we tested a modification for both purchases and refinances.) We also did one more round of Spanish language testing for the refinance versions. The modified disclosures tested well and are the ones included in the final rule.

November 20, 2013

A final rule

The CFPB issues a Final Rule. The final rule creates new integrated mortgage disclosures and details the requirements for using them. The rule is effective for mortgage applications received starting August 1, 2015.